focus for this week: Why don't birds fly backwards ?
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Does your customer smile when (s)he is confronted with an error? No - why not?

I am not so happy with my web provider.
Seems, always when I want to post something, there happen problems

• hm, or are there always problems?
  
  

Of course they are right - there can be different reasons for this error, but still: at that moment I just want my task to be done.
If I email the webmaster, this will eventually take even longer. So I retry. And thank God: it works.

But how about, if you place yourself for one moment into your customer ?
E.g. Orkut seems having done this.
When there appears an error, it is told:
Bad, bad server. Today there are no sweets for you.
…
We apologize for the trouble and for the “ruthless” behaviour of our server

I liked this - I even smiled.
But the standard message from my provider is so sh.t.
The request I have to you: make me as customer happy. Even if it is only with an inventive error message. Or better: don’t let even such errors happen.

Author: Erkan Yilmaz (2007-04-22)